How to Mine Monero? MyBitcoin User, Investor & Trader Knowledge Base

Chapter 4.4

Monero is one of the world’s largest and best-known altcoins. Today, many people – including hobby miners and big mining farms – mine Monero to generate a consistent profit.

Do you want to mine Monero (XMR)? Whether you’ve got a high-powered PC at home or an entire server farm, we’re going to explain everything you need to know about mining Monero.

How Does Monero Mining Work?

Monero is a popular privacy-focused cryptocurrency. The cryptocurrency is famous for its anonymity. Unlike bitcoin, you can’t track Monero coins during transactions. However, Monero still allows the two trading parties to easily verify details of the trade. Over the years, many dark web services have migrated to using Monero. Of course, Monero can also be used by any privacy-focused individuals for legitimate, legal purposes.

Monero, like bitcoin and Ethereum, is built on a cryptographically-secured PoW blockchain. That means you can mine Monero using your computer’s resources to compete for a block reward and transaction fees.

Monero, like Ethereum, has special ASIC-resistant features built into it. This was done on purpose to ensure someone with a bunch of ASICs couldn’t grab control of the network – similar to what we’ve seen with bitcoin’s network and the concentration of mining power.

The fact that Monero is ASIC-resistant is great news for anyone with a high-powered GPU – or multiple high-powered GPUs. Anyone with a CPU or GPU can mine Monero.

What You Need to Mine Monero?

If you want to mine Monero, then you need the same four basic things you need with any crypto mining operation, including:

Monero mining hardware

Monero mining software

A Monero mining pool

A Monero wallet address

Once you have these four things, you can begin mining Monero – and hopefully start generating positive ROI.

Monero Mining Hardware

Monero doesn’t require any special hardware. It’s not like bitcoin mining, which pretty much exclusively takes place on ASICs. Instead, anyone with a CPU or GPU can mine Monero.

Just like Ethereum mining, Monero mining works best with AMD cards. However, anyone with one or more high-powered GPUs should be able to successfully mine Monero. Certain software also works best with Nvidia cards – so whether you’re using AMD or Nvidia, you should have no trouble mining Monero.

Monero Mining Software

There are a variety of different Monero mining software programs available today. The most popular software programs include:

XMR Stak

Wolf’s Miner

CC Miner

Monero Spelunker

XMR Stak and Wolf’s Miner are ideal for those with AMD cards. However, you’ll pay a 2% fee to the developers when using XMR Stak (unless you’re compiling it yourself). Meanwhile, Nvidia card users can use XMR STak (they’ll pay the same 2% fee) or CC Miner.

Finally, those mining via a CPU can use Monero Spelunker, XMR Stak, or Wolf’s Miner.

Most of the software above is available for Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. You download the software for free online, unzip to your desired location, then run the executable file inside to fire up your Monero mining software. Your antivirus software will likely trigger an alert when you download the Monero miner – so make sure you’re downloading the mining software from the correct source.

Join a Mining Pool

Most Monero miners will join a mining pool. You enter the details of the mining pool into your mining software, then receive the pool address. For most people mining Monero with high-powered gaming PCs, joining a mining pool is your best option. You pay a small fee, but you’ll typically come out ahead in the long run because you have a higher chance of earning block rewards.

There are several major Monero mining pools available to be joined today, including:

MineXMR

Moneropool

Nanopool

Dwarfpool

Check these Monero mining pools and others to find one that meets your needs. These pools have different fees, payout restrictions, and locations. MineXMR, for example, only has servers available in France, Germany, and Canada, while Nanopool has multiple US-based servers.

A Monero Wallet

You’ll need a Monero wallet to store your mining profits. Once you’ve setup a Monero wallet, you enter the public address of that wallet into your mining software or pool.

The most popular Monero wallet is the MyMonero web wallet. The official Monero GUI wallet is also easy to use. You can view the official Monero wallets for Windows, Mac OS, and Linux here: https://getmonero.org/downloads/

Alternatively, more advanced users will want to use the command line interface (CLI) wallet for Monero or a cold storage solution for maximum security.

Once you’ve setup all of these things, you’re officially ready to begin mining Monero!